Should Have Seen It Coming
by TheSlashBunny
Summary: Yes, perhaps Spock should have seen it coming, but what could he have done to stop it? He could not stop the thought that he had failed everyone. Spock's POV *Warning: CHARACTER DEATH, implied suicide, implied Kirk/McCoy if you tilt your head and squint*


_Written while in a bad place and listening to Angel by Sarah McLachlan and Whiskey Lullaby by Brad Paisley feat. Alison Krauss_

* * *

Perhaps he should have seen it coming, been able to predict what would have happened. It was a rationalization, a human attempt at controlling a human emotion, a Vulcan attempt at understanding an ultimately irrational and illogical act. But when he looked over at Nyota crying quietly next to him, he could not stop the thought that he had failed her, failed everyone, by not being able to prevent it. As First Officer, it was his duty to notice when something was amiss, to take steps to prevent disaster.

As Acting Captain, it was his duty to say something, to say the words that the crew needed to hear. Yet, for perhaps the first time since the loss of Vulcan, the words would not come. The captain - Jim - would've known what to say... but Jim wasn't here, would no longer be here. And truly, Jim would've been more broken even then Chekov, who was openly weeping, yet determined to stand at attention in the presence of the rest of the crew, in the presence of superior officers. Sulu was staring straight ahead, his gaze fixed on some point on the opposite wall, but Spock knew that if he looked down, he would see the pilot's hands clenched in fists, fingernails most likely breaking the skin. Scotty looked like he'd just crawled out of a newly emptied barrel of scotch and that he fully intended to go drown himself in another after the formalities were over. Chapel looked like this was the first dry-eyed moment she'd had in days, similar to the looks on the rest of the faces surrounded the Bridge Crew, and that the only reason she wasn't crying currently was because she was too dehydrated to form tears. And M'Benga... Spock would not hesitate to admit that he felt sympathy for the man... After all, he had found him in his quarters...

As Spock gazed around him, he thought that perhaps the words for the situation did not exist, in any of the many languages he knew. If he bothered to analyze the feelings that he would not admit he had, he would have found that he felt betrayed, abandoned, by the only two men who had helped every single one of the crew through the hardest times they had witnessed. Yes, Jim would have known what to say, or what to do, if words were not enough. But Jim was gone. He wasn't there to help them this time, to pull them out of this mess. And the man who they would have turned to next... Yes, perhaps Spock should have seen it coming, but what could he have done to stop it?

The doctor had already been broken. He'd lost his little girl in a shuttle accident while he was hundreds of light years away, in the middle of the dark nothing that he already hated. Jim had tried so hard to drag him out of the bourbon-induced stupor that he'd attempted to drown his heartbreak in. And after a while it had seemed that it was working. The doctor had been sober enough to resume his duties as CMO for a week before the unthinkable had happened. And Jim hadn't been there to drag McCoy out of the pain of losing the one person the doctor had left - the only other person who had managed to take up residence in the doctor's heart, alongside a curly-haired ten-year-old.

The doctor had blamed himself, though he was the only being on board with that opinion, and he lost his faith in his ability to heal. Spock himself had tried to assure the doctor that he'd done everything medically possible to save the captain, that nothing else could have been tried. But Spock had too emotionally compromised to make any further attempts at consolation. He had been fighting, and losing, his own battle with grief while trying to run a starship of officers and enlisted who had all lost their compass, their guiding light. Yes, he should have seen it coming, but he could not have prevented it any more than the doctor could have saved Jim.

M'Benga had been the one to find him, slumped over his desk in his quarters. In his hand, they had found a holo from the ship's last leave on Earth. It was the one they had decided to send with him - it had been of the captain, grinning brightly as he clutched a giggling young girl to his side, both beaming at the man holding the camera - for once, not a doctor, but a best friend and a father.

Spock was torn from his musings as a sob escaped from Nyota, as she began to cry openly, ignoring propriety and turning to cry into his shoulder. The sound of her weeping set off a chain reaction. Chekov's strength of will finally broke and he collapsed into the arms of the pilot who was still valiantly fighting back tears and failing horribly. Scotty had fallen to his knees and Keenser's hand on his shoulder seemed to do nothing to help his visible pain. Spock watched silently as one by one, the crew broke down, faced by the two coffins that Spock could not bring himself to eject into the black.

Perhaps he should have seen it coming, but he couldn't stop the tear that rolled down his cheek - just as he had not been able to save the two men who had been more than a captain and a doctor to the crew, the two men who had taken the time to learn every name, to learn about and ask about the friends and families of more than 400 homesick humans and aliens. The two men who had made the _Enterprise_ seem more like a home - for a hybrid with nowhere else to go, for a young woman who appreciated being acknowledged as more than another pretty face, for a whiz kid who missed his parents, for a pilot whose bravado hid an endless depth of loyalty and chivalry, and for a rescued Scot who concealed his soft heart under jokes - a group of young, misfit geniuses brought together by fate and held together by two damaged, self-sacrificing men: the youngest Captain and Chief Medical Officer Starfleet had ever had, and the best that Starfleet ever would.


End file.
